The key to appreciating The Witch is right there in the full title: “A New England Folktale.” The film is essentially a cautionary tale centered around a way of life and a set of standards that are extraordinarily outdated, and as such, is quite fascinating. It takes its lessons and its presupposition of the supernatural very seriously, and one could imagine the first generation of American Puritans creating such a film had the medium been available to them.

The Witch makes its point abundantly clear from the start. The first thing we see is the central family voluntarily leaving their community to go off on their own. This single moment is framed as an irreversible error, as community is all that’s keeping the dangerous and ungodly nature of the American continent from harming them. We see the daughter Thomasin recognizes this, and from the moment the town closes its gates, we know our family is doomed.

So much of this is communicated visually. The film’s lighting is extremely evocative, with its pale glare and the way it reflects off of the fair-skinned cast a constant reminder that they are already as good as dead. When the film trades its stark white lighting for the orange warmth of candlelight, it’s often indicative of the presence of evil, whether it be “Black Phillip,” the demonic rabbit, or the witch herself. The visuals are so strong and so important in how the story is conveyed that the first quarter of the film might as well be silent. Even the sound mix keeps the dialogue unusually low, as if to signify its insignificance.

As such, The Witch is not your typical horror movie. Like Stanley Kubrick’s The Shining, a building sense of dread and unease is prioritized over jump scares and cheap imagery. It’s not that The Witch pulls its punches; this is a film in which a horrific fate befalls a newborn child within the first 15 minutes. But first-time-writer-director Robert Eggers is far more interested in making his viewers on-edge than making them jump out of their seats.

Perhaps this is why so many casual moviegoers have questioned whether The Witch is a horror film. Given the focus on the family’s interpersonal issues and their slow descent into madness, it can at times feel more like a period-drama. However, to deny The Witch’s status as a horror movie is to underestimate the genre. The sustained horrific tone of The Witch is not only crucial to The Witch and a major signifier of its genre, but also a result of a type of horror that is rarely attempted in modern cinema, let alone done well. There’s a sense of unholy discomfort that permeates the last act of this film that is far more difficult to convey than a simple jump scare or moment of violence.

It probably helps to go into The Witch with this in mind. it’s certainly not The Conjuring, and anybody looking for a more traditional horror experience should look elsewhere. But those with open minds should give Robert Eggers’ stellar first effort a chance. It attempts a tone and feeling that few films dare try for and does it exceptionally well.